Transcript of "Nec report 20040701_online_clinician-pt_messaging-1"

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ONLINE P ATIENT-CLINICIAN MESSAGING: FUNDAMENTALS OF ETHICAL PRACTICE A Report by the National Ethics Committee of the Veterans Health Administration July 2004 National Center for Ethics in Health Care Veterans Health Administration Department of Veterans Affairs

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Founded in 1986, the National Ethics Committee (NEC) of the Veterans Health Administration(VHA) is an interdisciplinary group authorized by the Under Secretary for Health through theNational Center for Ethics in Health Care. The NEC produces reports on timely topics that are ofsignificant concern to practicing health care professionals. Each report describes an ethical issue,summarizes its historical context, discusses its relevance to VHA, reviews current controversies, andoutlines practical recommendations. Previous reports have been useful to VHA professionals asresources for educational programs, guides for patient care practices, and catalysts for health policyreform. Scholarly yet practical, these reports are intended to heighten awareness of ethical issues andto improve the quality of health care, both within and beyond VHA.

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician MessagingExecutive Summary Surveys repeatedly show that patients want to be able to communicate with their cliniciansonline. And online patient-clinician communication is widely held to have significant potential toenhance patient-clinician relationships, promote greater involvement by patients in their own care(including self-monitoring), and ultimately improve the outcomes of care. Concerns have beenraised, however, about patient privacy, the effects of online communication on patient-clinicianrelationships, and the potential impact on clinicians’ workload and reimbursement. This report by VHA’s National Ethics Committee (NEC) examines the nature of onlinecommunication and explores the ethical challenges of online communication between patients andclinicians. It offers the following recommendations to assure the ethical practice of online patient-clinician messaging within VHA: (1) Clinicians and health care organizations should ensure that online communication takes place only when the confidentiality and security of personal health information can be reasonably assured. (2) Clinicians should ensure that patients who do not interact electronically receive the same quality of care as their online peers. (3) Clinicians should be aware of the potential effects of online messaging on the patient-clinician relationship and take steps to avoid “depersonalization.” (4) Participation in online messaging should be voluntary for both patients and clinicians. (5) Clinicians should assure that patient participation in online communication is well informed. (6) Clinicians should limit their online communication with patients to appropriate uses. (7) Health care organizations should recognize online interactions with patients as part of clinicians’ professional activities in institutionally appropriate ways. National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004 1

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician MessagingIntroduction Widespread adoption of computer-supported communication between patients and clinicians,i.e., “online” health communication, seems all but inevitable. Surveys repeatedly show that patientswant to be able to email their clinicians to make appointments, refill prescriptions, get the results ofclinical tests, even ask health-related questions that don’t require an office visit.1–4 And at least someof them are willing to pay out of pocket for the opportunity.2 In particular, patient-clinician email ormessaging is widely held to have significant potential to enhance patient-clinician relationships,promote greater involvement by patients in their own care (including self-monitoring), andultimately improve the outcomes of care. 3,5–11 For patients in the Veterans Health Administration, the option of communicating online withtheir clinicians is about to become a reality. VHA, a recognized leader in integrating informationtechnologies into the delivery of health care, will soon make patient-clinician messaging availablenationwide through its My HealtheVet initiative. 121 Communicating online can offer efficiency and convenience for both parties, by overcoming theproblems of “telephone tag” or geographic distance. 3,10,13–14 And many believe that it can promotemore effective communication, at least insofar as it enables clinicians to convey complexinformation more clearly than is usually possible in telephone (or even face-to-face) conversations,and readily allows both parties to create a written record of their communication. 5,8,10,13,15 Moreover,recent evidence suggests that online communication can promote more efficient utilization of healthcare resources and thus help reduce costs. 16–17 A study sponsored by Blue Shield of California, forexample, reported reductions of $1.92/patient/month for physician office claims and$3.69/patient/month for overall health care claims after the introduction of web messagingsoftware.17 And third-party payers are increasingly willing to reimburse for time spentcommunicating with patients online.17–18 Clinicians have been reluctant to adopt the practice, however, citing concerns about patientprivacy, the possible impact on their workload, the lack of reimbursement for time spent online, andlicensure and liability issues.15,19–22 Studies confirm the importance of these considerations evenamong clinicians who do communicate online.23–24 Despite such reservations, as a practical matter thequestion is rapidly becoming not whether online communication between patient and clinician will beaccepted, but how to assure that good communication practices are adopted so that patients’ interestsare protected and online communication takes place in a way that enhances, rather than imperils,patient-clinician relationships. This report by VHA’s National Ethics Committee (NEC) examinesthe nature of online communication, explores the ethical challenges of online communicationbetween patients and clinicians, and offers recommendations for the ethical practice of onlinepatient-clinician messaging within VHA.Online Health Communication in Context It is important at the outset to understand the nature of online exchange as a mode ofcommunication. It is also important to recognize that online health communication between patientsand clinicians can use different channels (encrypted or unencrypted email or web-based messaging),serve a variety of different purposes, and take place in the context of different patient-providerrelationships.1 Current VA policy explicitly prohibits sending confidential information to patients via email, even at the patient’s request. SeeVHA Directive 2003-025: Confidential Communications, May 23, 2003. Available athttp://vaww.va.gov/publ/direc/health/direct/12003025.pdf; last accessed June 14, 2004.2 National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician Messaging Understanding the Medium. Many of the features that make online communication attractivealso raise concerns, even among staunch proponents.5 For example, that online communication isasynchronous—i.e., need not take place in real time—offers certain efficiencies, but can also createethically troubling situations. What if the message conveyed is urgent and it isn’t received right away?Similarly, online communication affords a measure of anonymity that may enable patients tocommunicate more candidly than they would in person or on the phone about topics they findembarrassing or sensitive, but also makes it possible for patients (or clinicians) to disguise theiridentities. Further, most people treat electronic messages as an informal mode of communication, morelike a telephone conversation than a written document. In doing so they neglect the fact that suchmessages are self-documenting and, unlike notes from telephone conversations, constitute a verbatimrecord of communication. If electronic messages are incorporated into the medical record as currentprofessional guidelines recommend,5,8,25–26 they represent the only occasion on which the patient’sown words are entered directly into his or her record.13 Coupled with this relative informality, many users expect online communication to give themimmediate access to those with whom they share messages.9 In the context of patient-cliniciancommunication, this can translate into a patient’s expectation that his or her clinician will always beaccessible. For their part, clinicians are no less socialized to feel that online messages demandimmediate, or at least prompt, responses. Thus they may feel pressured to meet what they perceiveto be patients’ electronic “demands” for their time and attention. Whether clinicians’ assumptionsabout patient expectations are accurate is open to question, however. 27 There is evidence in othercontexts to suggest that clinicians attribute expectations to patients in general that patientsthemselves don’t hold. 28 Finally, electronic messaging is an inherently “thin” communications medium. 5,29 Electronicmessages are extremely poor channels for conveying emotion or psychological state or for usinglanguage figuratively; puns or other figures of speech, and attempts at irony or sarcasm often fail tocome across as the sender intended, sometimes with disastrous results. Electronic messages carrynone of the “nonverbal” cues—tone of voice, “body language,” breathing pattern, rate of speech,facial expression and posture, etc.—that people rely on to understand one another in face-to-faceinteractions. Email vs. Web Messaging. To date, most online communication between patients andclinicians has taken place via Internet email using commercial services. 3,30 Email has the virtue ofbeing widely available and easy to use. But without additional, often cumbersome software toencrypt messages and authenticate users, parties to email communication cannot be assured either ofthe confidentiality or integrity of message content or the identity of sender and recipient. “Web messaging” (or “secure messaging”), in contrast, allows users to exchange information ona single, protected computer. Secure messaging requires users to take an additional step of loggingon to a password-protected website before posting or receiving messages, but is otherwise easy touse and provides greater protection than conventional email. Moreover, secure messaging supportsthe use of message templates to organize the content of exchanges.3,30 Purposes. Online health communication between patients and clinicians can addressadministrative or “housekeeping” matters, such as scheduling appointments, updating patientdemographic information, or addressing billing questions. 15 Or it can support specific clinicaldiscussions—for example, when clinicians respond to patients’ questions about a current health National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004 3

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician Messagingcondition or self-management.15 Some exchanges can serve both ends, as when patients completemedical history questionnaires or clinical intake forms electronically prior to a health care visit. Relationships. Finally, online health communication can take place in the context of differentkinds of relationship between patient and clinician. Online communication is often thought of in thecontext of an existing patient-clinician relationship, and indeed several professional guidelinesrecommend that its use be restricted to this context. 5,8,15 Increasingly, however, patients andclinicians unknown to one another are communicating about health matters online—for example,when a patient posts a question to an online health consultation service or interacts in an onlinediscussion group that is moderated by a clinician whom he or she has never met face to face.30–35Ethical Challenges of Patient-Clinician Messaging Despite considerable enthusiasm in some quarters6 and expectations of real benefits for patientsand clinicians who communicate online, such communication does pose ethical challenges that needto be addressed before clinicians fully embrace this new method of communicating with theirpatients. The most salient concerns about online messaging involve privacy and confidentiality,access, effects on patient-clinician relationships, voluntariness of participation, informedparticipation, boundaries of online professional practice, and fairness with respect to workload andcompensation. Privacy & Confidentiality. Privacy and confidentiality are central values in health care. Asmoral agents, patients have the right to determine who has access to their persons and personalinformation. They also have the right to expect that clinicians will not share their personal healthinformation inappropriately outside the patient-clinician relationship. Privacy and confidentialityfurther have instrumental value in the health care setting in creating the conditions for trust betweenpatients and clinicians that are essential to therapeutic relationships. The material and psychosocialharms that can result from breaches of confidentiality, such as stigmatization or discrimination, canbe significant, and patients must be able to trust that information they share with clinicians will bekept in confidence. Clinicians thus have a well-recognized ethical obligation to respect patients’privacy and to assure that patients’ personal health information is kept confidential and is notinappropriately disclosed to third parties. 36 Online messaging in the health care setting thus requires good privacy practices specific to thisenvironment. The ease with which information can be shared electronically, intentionally orinadvertently, requires that clinicians be vigilant in protecting patient messages. Just as patients’computerized medical records should never be left open to casual view on a computer monitor,neither should patient-clinician messages. Professionals also have a responsibility to establishunderstandings with patients about who will have access to messages, and under what conditionsmessages will be forwarded to third parties. 5,8 In the context of online patient-clinician messaging,privacy concerns extend to technical matters of electronic security and authentication. Mechanismsare evolving rapidly to prevent unauthorized electronic access to personal health information intransmission, to protect the integrity of information that is stored and transmitted electronically, andto assure that sender and recipient of an electronic message are each who they represent themselvesto be. My HealtheVet is being designed to address these and other privacy concerns, includingcompliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Access to Online Health Communication. There is also concern that online communicationbetween patients and clinicians will exacerbate existing inequalities in health care by discriminating4 National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician Messagingagainst those who have no or limited access to online communication. Many of those who are mostin need of health care services are also among the most disadvantaged segments of the Americanpopulation, who are less likely to be online and/or less able to take advantage of online healthcommunication when they do have access.37 Meaningful access to online communication encompasses a number of factors. One, obviously,is access to the required technology itself. The “digital divide” between those who do and do nothave access to the Internet and World Wide Web is closing—overall, 58 percent of American adultsreported using the Internet in a 2002 survey.38 But the same study found that there are stillsignificant differences associated with ethnicity, income, education level, and age. 38–39 Cost of accessis also a barrier for nearly a third of those who are not now online, particularly among older persons.Establishing free or low-cost points of access—in libraries, schools, community centers, or otherpublic venues—goes only part way to addressing the problem, however. Health-relatedcommunications are “too personal to be made in a public arena” for one thing, 37 and restrictingaccess to the normal operating hours of public facilities diminishes much of the value of onlinecommunication for users. Just as important is patients’ ability to use technology to which they have access. Patientswho have poor skills in reading and writing, for example—nearly a quarter of American adults havedifficulties with literacy that impair their daily functioning38—will require help if they are tocommunicate effectively with clinicians online. Similarly, patients who do not speak the samelanguage as the clinicians with whom they interact, or who do not read or write in the providers’language, can face similar barriers to effective communication online as they do offline.34 Otherprospective users may require support and encouragement to become comfortable with thetechnology.38 Finally, some patients will not wish to participate in online communication. Great care mustbe taken to assure that patients who choose not to interact with clinicians electronically, or who areunable to do so, receive clinically appropriate care of the same quality as their online peers. Effects on Patient-Clinician Relationships. Communicating online, some worry, putspatients and clinicians at yet a further remove from one another. For example, one physician told a2001 Harris Interactive study, I think it would be a shame to manage patients’ health care on the Internet and to lose the human interaction and contact. How can you build trust in your physician over a computer? I think one of the basic things we learned was human touch and caring. I find it difficult to believe that that, or some of that, won’t be lost over the Internet. 1In a similar vein, other scholars contend that “[t]he absence of personal communication andconnection that occurs in a face-to-face meeting is also a major, unquantifiable loss”31 in onlinecommunication. Moreover, they note, nonverbal communication . . . plays a central role in communicating empathy, concern, and expressiveness. Physicians’ skills in using and interpreting nonverbal communication also have been closely linked to patients’ satisfaction. 31, cf. 40 Not all clinicians share this view, however, and many would argue that online communicationmakes it possible to recapture professionally satisfying relationships with patients.41–42 For example,one physician has remarked, National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004 5

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician Messaging Rather than episodic interaction during hurried office visits, I now have continuous communication. I feel like Marcus Welby again. 42 Those patients who have communicated online with clinicians have described generally positive experiences, as we have seen. Patients have noted that online communication allows them to open up and speak frankly in ways they cannot in person, for example, enhancing rather than diminishing their relationships with their physicians: “Using Email with Dr. Moore is more convenient. It’s often difficult for me to explain things to him in person. This way, I can write out my thoughts and concerns more clearly. The ability to be more direct with my physician is important to me.” Another of his patients concurred. “I’m not as cautious as I am when I’m with him face-to-face,” she said. “(Sending an email) is actually more personable for me.”30 Online communication undoubtedly has the potential to change the dynamics of patient-clinician interactions, and individual patients and clinicians will doubtless respond differently tochanges they experience.23–24,27 But just how online interaction affects patient-clinician relationshipsis an empirical question that is still unsettled. Much surely depends on the specific circumstances ofindividual clinicians and the patient populations they serve. Voluntariness of Participation. Patients should always have the right to refuse tocommunicate online with clinicians, just as they can refuse to interact with clinicians in other ways.For the present, those clinicians who are concerned that communicating online will diminish thequality of their interactions with patients should be permitted not to engage in this mode ofcommunication. It would not be inappropriate, however, for health care organizations to offerincentives to clinicians to participate. And, if and when benefit is clearly established, it would bereasonable for health care organizations to require them to do so in the interests of providing moreefficient care overall. As with any new technology, experience may show that some concerns do not materialize, orare not as acute as initially expected. Within VHA, for example, as clinicians have used CPRS (thecomputerized patient record system) and become more experienced in working with electronicmedical records, their initially negative expectations have gradually been overcome. At the same time, allowing patients and clinicians to choose individually whether they willcommunicate online runs the risk of creating two classes of patients. Thus care must be taken toassure that opting out of online communication does not diminish access to and/or quality of care.23 Informed Participation. Patients should be able to make well-considered decisions whether tocommunicate online with clinicians about health care concerns. Clinicians thus have an obligation toexplain their online communication practices. This should include discussing the limitations of webmessaging—for example, that messages will not be exchanged in real time (i.e., patients should nottreat communication with clinicians as “instant messaging”), or that messaging cannot convey somepotentially important kinds of information (such as tone of voice). Clinicians should also explaintheir offices’ or their organizations’ practices for handling messages, just as they would alert patientsto telephone protocols. Current professional guidelines recommend that clinicians enter into anexplicit agreement with patients, either orally or in writing, regarding the terms and conditions thatwill govern their online communication. 5,8,25 Guidelines differ somewhat in their details, but all stressthe need for agreements that disclose privacy risks and describe security practices; explain how6 National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician Messagingmessages will be handled, including whether and in what form messages will be incorporated intothe medical record and/or archived, and any provisions for terminating the option of onlinecommunication. 8,5 With respect to defining terms and conditions for online communication, the eRisk WorkingGroup has gone so far as to recommend that clinicians “consider developing patient selectioncriteria to identify those patients suitable for e-mail correspondence, thus eliminating persons whowould not be compliant.”25 However, without clear evidence about how many patients “abuse”online health communication, or whether the class of potential “abusers” can be rigorouslycharacterized, such recommendations are at best premature. By proposing to disenfranchise somepatients, rather than limit some kinds of interaction, this response to concerns about potentiallyinappropriate use of online communication seems ethically unwarranted. Whether patients should be required to give signed informed consent to participate in onlinecommunication is a less settled matter, however. The AMA recommends that patients signagreements regarding the terms of online communication, and that those agreements bedocumented in the medical record.8,13 But while “it is imperative that patients be clearly informedabout the range and limits of electronic communication tools,” some commentators disagree thatthe formal (legal) doctrine of informed consent should be applied in this context: Certainly we do not require that a patient sign a consent form before engaging in a telephone conversation or a face-to-face office visit. Likewise, the creation of additional paperwork for already overburdened patients and physicians in the way of an “Internet or e-mail consent form” is not necessary.40 Boundaries of Online Professional Practice. The disembodied nature of onlinecommunication also poses challenges with regard to professional competence and quality of care.Broad standards are emerging with respect to what kinds of health concerns can be appropriatelyaddressed via online communication and which clearly should only be handled by telephone or faceto face. First, it is generally agreed that the constraints of the online medium make it poorly suited toinitiating a patient-clinician relationship. The initial encounter between a patient and a clinician, inwhich that relationship is established, differs in important ways from subsequent interactions. By theconventions of professional practice, for example, the first encounter involves a physicalexamination—the relationship begins with direct observation and touching of the patient’s body thatcannot be accomplished online.31 Professional practice also relies on an interpersonal relationship,which is most effectively established through an initial face-to-face interaction. Second, there is strong consensus that online communication is not a suitable channel when thesubject is of an urgent nature.8,25–26, 29 Online communications are also inappropriate for exchanginghighly sensitive information. 8,5, 25,26 Even when electronic communication technologies providesecure environments that support synchronous exchanges, 41 there are still circumstances thatdemand real-time, face-to-face interactions, as when the clinician must deliver “bad news” to apatient whom he or she reasonably expects to need the support that an in-person encounterprovides. Third, clinicians (as well as patients) should use care in composing exchanges that are clear,coherent, and succinct to assure that parties understand one another. Rambling messages withpoorly organized content, or that touch on many different topics; messages that are carelesslyworded or contain many grammatically incorrect or incomplete sentences or typographical errors; ormessages that omit important pieces of information (e.g., sender’s name and contact information) National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004 7

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician Messagingare particularly problematic in the clinical context. 5,8,25 Using templates to guide patients incomposing messages can help to assure clinicians receive the information they need to respondappropriately. 43 Fourth, clinicians and health care organizations should establish and follow written policies andprocedures regarding patient-clinician messaging. These should specify, at a minimum, standards foraccess to messages, timeliness in responding to messages, acknowledging incoming messages,archiving and backing up messages, forwarding messages to third parties, and circumstances underwhich the option to use online communication may be withdrawn. Fairness with Respect to Workload & Compensation. In addition to concerns about theimpact on the intangible dimensions of patient-clinician relationships, surveys have indicatedwidespread concern that online communication will be burdensome, adding to the clinician’sworkload. 2 Importantly, this is linked to concerns that exchanging electronic communication willsimply be one more activity for which clinicians will not be compensated by insurers and healthplans.2,17,24 The little evidence available suggests that the impact of online communication may not beas negative as clinicians fear—those who most actively communicate with patients online report thatit has not proven burdensome and indicate overall satisfaction with the experience. 23 But there canbe economies of scale a t stake: in some situations, unless the majority of patients in a practicecommunicate online, reading and responding to patient email can add to the clinician’s or practice’sworkload without significantly enhancing efficiency.13 As we have noted, however, the empiricalquestion of impact on practice is complex, involving not only whether patients and clinicians haveeffective access to online communication, but also the mix of patients in a given clinician’s panel,individual patients’ expectations and communication habits, etc. How deep an impact onlinecommunication will have on clinicians’ workload remains uncertain at this time, and is likely to bequite variable. To date, most clinicians have not been reimbursed for time spent handling patient email. Third-party payers are exploring different mechanisms, however, including direct reimbursement for onlineservices and patient copays.44,16–18 There is a growing body of evidence showing potential costsavings—Blue Shield of California, for example, has projected savings of $3 million per month oncee-consultation becomes available to all of its members22—suggesting that third-party payers areincreasingly likely to implement mechanisms to reimburse clinicians for their online interactions withpatients. When a health care organization permits or, especially, when it encourages onlinecommunication between patients and clinicians, fairness requires that the organization acknowledgethe workload involved in the activity. Organizations should adopt performance measures or othermechanisms that credit online interactions in a manner that is reasonably comparable to recognitiongiven face-to-face interactions, and should take care to apply those measures evenhandedly. Forexample, if communicating online with some patients increases a clinician’s efficiency andeffectiveness overall, he or she should be recognized and rewarded appropriately. Many of these concerns are touched on in professional guidelines for online communicationthat have been adopted in recent years by a variety of organizations, including the American MedicalAssociation8 and the eRisk Working Group for Healthcare, a consortium of medical societies,professional liability insurance carriers, and state medical board representatives, 25 among others.44–46Patient-Clinician Messaging in VA VA has been at the forefront in adopting information technologies to transform how healthcare is delivered and to improve the quality of care. Its computerized patient record system, for8 National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician Messagingexample, makes patients’ medical records available to clinicians throughout the largest health caredelivery system in the country.7 In November 2003 VHA launched My HealtheVet, a multi-phaseproject to develop “a web-based application that creates a new, online environment where veterans,family, and clinicians may come together to optimize veterans health care.”12 By March 31, 2004more than 18,000 veterans (including patients), VA employees, and care providers had registered forthe service. 12 When fully implemented, My HealtheVet will enable veterans to manage a variety ofadministrative functions (such as prescription refills or appointments), access their personal healthrecords, self-enter data, and grant family members or others access to all or to specified portions ofthe veteran’s health information. Access to the various functionalities of the My HealtheVet portal isconditioned on three levels of increasingly stringent registration: veteran self-registration (for accessto general benefits information or educational resources), validation through a VA database (forprescription refills, etc.), and face-to-face validation at a VA facility (for access to the personal healthrecord). In its final stages, My HealtheVet proposes to launch a secure web-messaging application tosupport online communication between patients and their VA clinicians.2 Within VA, My HealtheVet will provide the secure environment required for responsible onlinecommunication between patients and clinicians dealing with matters of diagnosis, prognosis, andtreatment plan. By having both patient and clinician log on to a password-protected website toretrieve messages, secure web messaging overcomes the need for complex encryption protocols. MyHealtheVet registration procedures will serve to authenticate the identity of patient-participants whileclinicians are authenticated through VA’s normal mechanisms for granting clinical privileges andaccess to computerized patient records. Moreover, the proposed requirement that participantsregister in person for access to My HealtheVet’s messaging function will offer opportunities toeducate patients about how to use online communication wisely, and to identify those individualswho may need assistance to do so effectively or for whom online communication may not beappropriate or prudent. Historically, VA patients have often been disadvantaged. Veterans who seek care in VA are“older, sicker, [and] have less income and less insurance than the general population.”47-48 Theaverage age of VA enrollees is sixty-three, and 48 percent of VA patients are over the age of sixty-five (compared to 12 percent of the general population). 47 Some 28 percent of VA patients haveannual incomes below $26,000; 15 percent have no health insurance. 47 The demographic profile ofVA patients is changing as the overall veteran population changes, with rising numbers of younger,better educated, socioeconomically better off veterans, 49 but there is still a significant segment ofVA’s patient population who may not embrace or be well positioned to participate in onlinecommunication with clinicians. In addition, online communication is likely to be inappropriate forsome defined patient populations whose numbers are projected to increase substantially over thenext fifteen to twenty years, such as individuals with dementia.50 This again argues for attention toassuring that efforts to encourage online communication do not disadvantage these patients. National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004 9

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician MessagingRecommendations for the Ethical Practice of Online Patient-Clinician Messaging Online communication is becoming a significant channel for interaction between patients andclinicians. If online patient-clinician communication is to serve patients’ interests well, health careorganizations and individual clinicians must be sensitive potential ethical pitfalls of onlinecommunication. VHA’s National Ethics Committee makes the following recommendations toassure ethically sound online communication between patients and clinicians: (1) Clinicians and health care organizations should ensure that online communication takes place only when the confidentiality and security of personal health information can be reasonably assured. Once implemented nationally, My HealtheVet will provide the foundation for a secure environment required for responsible online communication between patients and clinicians. (2) Clinicians should ensure that patients who do not interact electronically receive the same quality of care as their online peers. Online communication should not be allowed to exacerbate existing inequalities in health care by discriminating against those who have no or limited access to online communication. (3) Clinicians should be aware of the potential effects of online messaging on the patient-clinician relationship and take steps to avoid “depersonalization.” Just how online interaction affects patient-clinician relationships is an empirical question that is still unsettled. (4) Participation in online messaging should be voluntary for both patients and clinicians. As VHA gains more experience with this medium, requiring clinician participation may some day be justified. However, patient participation should remain voluntary. (5) Clinicians should assure that patient participation in online communication is well informed. Clinicians should enter into an explicit agreement with patients, either orally or in writing, regarding the terms and conditions that will govern their online communication. However, there is no need to require patients to sign an informed consent form. (6) Clinicians should limit their online communication with patients to appropriate uses. Online communication should not be used to initiate a patient-clinician relationship, to handle situations of an urgent nature, or to convey information that is highly sensitive. Messages should be carefully worded and organized to ensure effective communication, and should conform to organizational standards with regard to message handling. (7) Health care organizations should recognize online interactions with patients as part of clinicians’ professional activities in institutionally appropriate ways. This may be accomplished, for example, by formally scheduling time for messaging, or by adopting the recently proposed AMA CPT code for online evaluation and management of patients54 to capture data regarding online patient communication, evaluation, and management as a professional clinical activity.10 National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004

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______________________________________________________________________________________________ Online Patient-Clinician MessagingReferences1. HarrisInteractive, Study reveals big potential for the Internet to improve doctor-patient relations. Health Care News 2001;1(1):1–3.2. HarrisInteractive, Patient/physician online communication: Many patients want it, would pay for it, and it would influence their choice of doctors and health plans. Health Care News 2002;2(8):1– 4. Available at http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/newsletters/healthnews/HI_HealthCareNews2002Vol2 _ Iss08.pdf; last accessed January 1, 2004.3. Grover F, Jr., Blanford C, Holcomb S, Tidler, D, Computer-using patients want Internet services from family physicians. Journal of Family Practice 2002; 51(6):570–72.4. Liederman EM, Morefield CS, Web messaging: A new tool for patient-physician communication. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 2003; 10: 260–70. Available at http://www.jamia.org/cgi/reprint/10/3/260.pdf; last accessed January 9, 2004.5. Kane B, Sands DZ, Guidelines for the clinical use of electronic mail with patients. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 1998; 5:104–111. Available at http://www.jamia.org/cgi/reprint/5/1/104; last accessed June 9, 2004.6. Sands DZ, Electronic patient centered communication resources. http://134.174.100.34/#About; last accessed June 9, 2004.7. Institute of Medicine, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000).8. American Medical Association, Guidelines for Physician-Patient Electronic Communications. Availabe at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/printcat/2386.html; updated May 16, 2003; last accessed August 28, 2003. See also CEJA policy statement at http://www.ama- assn.org/ama/pub/printcat/2386.html.9. Fox S, Fallows D, Health Internet Resource (Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2003). Available at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/ PIP_Health_Report_July_2003.pdf; last accessed June 9, 2004.10. Spicer J, Getting patients off hold and online. Family Practice Management 1999 (January). Available at http://www.aafp.org/fpm/990100fm/34.html; last accessed January 9, 2004.11. HarrisInteractive, eHealth’s influence continues to grow as usage of the Internet by physicians and patients increases. Health Care News 2003;3(6):1–7.12. Department of Veterans Affairs, My HealtheVet. http://vaww1.va.gov/MyHealtheVet; last accessed April 16, 2004. National Center for Ethics in Health Care, July 2004 11

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